It’s Year Two! Community Health & Wellbeing Fund Launched!

It’s Year Two! Community Health & Wellbeing Fund Launched!

Year two of the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund is now open and welcoming applications – just click here for all the information you need:

https://engagerenfrewshire.org/engage-support/community-mental-health-wellbeing-fund.html

Last year the fund supported some amazing work, and we hope this year to see more inventive projects take place. The projects in the first year, while fantastic in variety, often had at their core a sense that they have been developed around need; people had talked about their own experiences and groups had responded. This year we’re keen that type of approach continues, with the voice of experience to the fore.

Getting people to share their experiences and concerns is not always easy but when it comes to creating co-produced community services it’s definitely ‘good to talk’. Folk of my vintage may remember the British Telecom ad campaign in the mid-1990’s which first pushed the ‘It’s good to talk’ line - suggesting that a good telephone system provides an opportunity for connecting and making things better, making things ‘good’ perhaps? But sometimes it feels to me that the omnipresent mobile phone – a much more flexible version of our hard-wired home phones celebrated in the 1990’s ad campaign – has led to less conversations. The other night I had a text exchange with my older brother and towards the end he said, by text, ‘Would have been quicker if you had just given me a phone’. Would have been more enjoyable too probably. However, on the other side of the ‘mobile’ debate, today’s smart phones of course offer excellent opportunities for ‘face to face’ as well as audio chats – I’m forever hearing my children wandering around the house with three or four friends on the same call, sharing updates on everything from homework issues to what they’ve just had for their tea. Sometimes my daughter is kind enough to introduce me to someone she’s chatting online with by pointing her camera phone at me – usually while I’m doing the dishes…

I tend to think that I talk a lot, too much in fact. I remember a lecturer of mine saying ‘Alan, if you’re not sure who’s talking the most, in any room, it’s probably you…’ I think she was trying to suggest that all of us should be aware that everyone has something to contribute to a discussion not just one or two people in the group – but it did feel like a dig, and clearly one I haven’t forgotten. I like to think that I listen too. I sometimes find it hard to listen when the person speaking is posing interesting ideas – I’m desperate to jump in and contribute when I should just sit back and take it in; allow the ideas to sink in before I react but of course that’s harder said than done sometimes. Good chat is exciting and invigorating right? Even good for the soul. Maybe if we agree that ‘it’s good to talk’ we should just exploit all possible forms of chat – when ‘in the room’, on the phone, using some form of text or even meeting on Zoom.

It’s not the platform that’s important is it? It’s that we connect, share, and show we care.

If you’re up for it please share these bits of info:

Community Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund - https://engagerenfrewshire.org/engage-support/community-mental-health-wellbeing-fund.html

World Suicide Prevention Day - https://www.samaritans.org/scotland/support-us/campaign/world-suicide-prevention-day/

All the best – speak soon

Alan